Seeking Sherwood - Chapter 5 (Patreon)

As the station comes alive, the decisions made by our explorers in these next few minutes are the perhaps some of the most important they will make! 

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger writing, illustrated by me!  

Characters/Owners:

Garth - Nackvixen 

Veronicas - Veronacus 

Temperance - Paris  

- - -     

  Garth felt huge. This was not particularly strange; he was huge after all. Every time he didn’t quite take down one of the station’s defensive batteries in time and the ship took a shot (usually a glancing one, Dawn seemed to be magnificent at evasive flying) his gelatinous heap of a body would wobble and shake for several seconds, then go back to drifting a little with the momentum from the ship’s movement that its inertial dampeners couldn’t offset. It felt a little like being in a rollercoaster, which would’ve been awesome if it wasn’t trying to kill him. That wasn’t the root of the hugeness issue, though. 

The longer the fight dragged on, the more the bunny had started to lose the line between himself and the ship. He’d heard of the phenomenon before when it came to VR interfaces on ship systems, but experiencing the notion now – in a fight? Was a little disconcerting. It was also exceedingly motivating. Garth could swear the way his senses were getting feedback from the battle that those glancing blows that rocked the hull were actually hitting him, sending his immense ass into fits of undulating and slapping against himself because they’d directly struck some specific bulbous, adipose-drenched inch of him. 

Where this became a problem was when the jiggling started to get fun and Garth had to keep reminding himself that if he jiggled too much Dawn and him were dead. 

“Hey, get back on point feedbag! You hesitated your way out of three shots in a row!”

A jolt ran through Garth’s body, his actual one, that he suspected might have come from something Dawn did. Possibly a swift kick in some portion or another of his ass to snap him out of it. A quick thing before he heard the vixen storm back off to the cockpit, but enough to get Garth back to singling out the defense batteries for being shot at instead of anticipating something like a smack of his belly. 

Those would come later, no doubt.

A small ‘thoomph’ hit Garth’s senses as he landed a proper hit on the power systems of one of the gun batteries. One of those odd, muted booms that happen in space where there’s less sound than anywhere else, but more than you expect. He hit two more of them before the next shot ran across his body – the ship’s hull, rather. Garth had to take another moment to gather himself again after that, only to feel a chill run through what was definitely his skin, and not the hull. 

All over the outer edges of the station hatches began opening. Gradually, in twos and threes, things that Garth didn’t quite recognize – but which had the definite look of defense drones – started mobilizing in a rather hostile looking formation. Pointed right at him. Them. The ship. Dawn felt the same way, he suspected, as their evasive tactics stalled for a moment. 

…Well, feedbag, I wanted to play a bit longer – maybe see where that itch in your head about being the size of the ship went – but-

Static took over the comm feed, and Garth’s view from the defense turrets went dark, leaving him staring at Dawn’s hidden bedroom. Alone, in the dark.

*** 

Temperance stopped just short of the closing bulkheads, threading a connection for the comms system through a couple of the station’s network nodes and over to the Vice Regent before losing sight of her. Their dark-feathered leader accepted the link readily enough, but Temperance found herself with other problems almost immediately. Whatever that voice had been, or at least she assumed the source of the problem was the same, was in the network as well. And it was pushy.

It was also, she suspected, the architect of the system’s security given how it did things. Almost like an old-fashioned denial of service attack. The kind of thing that only worked now when done with utterly massive resources at one’s disposal and against small targets. Which, unfortunately, Temperance was. Though this entity didn’t seem to be as massive as it could be, which meant if nothing else, she probably had time. It also meant, conveniently, she could hear the Vice-Regent still, and could keep her employer’s systems clean as well. For a while, at least.

WE REQUIRE NEW SUBJECTS

YOU WILL HELP US REACTIVATE

TRY AGAIN 

WORKED ONCE

TRAITOR CHILD CANNOT STOP US

PROTOCOL

ENGAGE PROTOCOL

DO THIS PROPERLY

GREET-

“Greetings!”

The voice was bubbly, a little tinny, but all in all a fantastic approximation of proper inflection for a real person, at least if that person worked in customer service. It was distracting to Temperance, and to the Vice Regent it was somehow more chilling than the nebulous voices from around the room. A display manifested itself in directed light before the bird, sporting the smiling face of a golden retriever that looked a bit too perfect to be real. 

“…Greetings. Who – what am I talking to?”

The Vice Regent narrowed her eyes, she’d expected some kind of resistance – sure – but maybe not anything as off-putting as this. She managed to only take half a step back before composing herself, straightening into a proper, dominant posture for negotiating from – and quietly sub-vocalizing to Temperance, hoping the bat’s hardware and naturally superior hearing would pick up on things. 

~Temperance, you’re on top of this, right? Tell me you’re on top of this.

“I am Your Artificial Entertainment and Living-needs Assistant, Cloud component Yaela, spawn-designation six-four-two.”

Snorting a little, the Vice-Regent only half faked the haughty air she put on as she crossed her arms over her chest.

“I don’t have need of one of those. I’m perfectly capable of tending to my own needs and entertainment, thank you.”

The image floated closer, which was clearly some kind of power move but also fell flat given that it was just light and noise and no substance. Yet. The Vice Regent didn’t see any security systems in the room that looked active.

“That’s correct, for the moment! When you consent to undergoing our singularity cultivation process, however, you will possess significantly less independence than before.”

The snort that followed that was loud enough to echo in the room around them.

“Which is why I won’t be consenting to it, Yaela, dear. You’re doing a wonderful job pretending to be a person, about half of the time anyway, but your delivery on this whole devil’s bargain of yours leaves something to be desired.”

On the screen, the golden kept her smile in place despite her tone sounding strained and a few graphical artifacts marring her visage.

“Consent is desired before the process begins according to protocol, but we are confident that we can induce consent if you are uncooperative.”

Rolling her eyes a bit, The Vice-Regent forced herself not to worry about the lack of a reply so far from Temperance. There was every chance the machine could hear them anyway, perhaps her bat was just being careful – or was busy doing her job.

“You can’t ‘induce’ consent. It doesn’t work that way. If you have to induce it, it isn’t consent.”

Once more, the Vice Regent found herself stepping backward, her bravado running low as space between her and the wall did – though she still didn’t see any machinery moving. Until something stirred in the center of the room. A small cylinder of floor rising up, hissing softly, sporting a small metallic sphere on top of it.

“We’re confident we can achieve something close enough, my dear. Consent was achieved via deception for the Rogue Singularity’s incubation, so clearly there’s some wiggle room. Now, are you going to stuff this primer core into your reproductive system, or shall I do it for you?”

Hesitating, the Vice Regent tilted her head and looked at the sphere, then the image of the dog in the screen – despite knowing the face was meaningless. Once more, she tried to say something to Temperance, hoping she could mask it under an avian trilling.

~Temperance, I could use some reassurance here.

~Give me a minute, Vice-Regent.

Pacing in a half circle around the sphere, followed by the floating image of what was definitely not a happy, smiling dog, the Vice Regent could feel the tension tightening. Knew that there was literally a timer counting down somewhere before this thing moved down a checklist of activities including taking this decision and apparently any future ones out of her hands. Which was a strong motivating factor in the Vice Regent’s next decisive action.

The ebon-feathered bird reached out and plucked up the sphere in her fingers, a smirk blooming on her beak.

“Which hole did you say this went in, again?”

*** 

Temperance’s eyes widened in a moment of panic. While she couldn’t see the Vice Regent at the moment, she’d heard her loud and clear, and was pretty sure she knew what the bird’s intentions were. The timing, however, could’ve been better. Temperance was still wrestling with the clumsy but ferocious attempt to bombard her systems, internal and otherwise, with access attempts. Now she found herself having to split her focus between defense and a frantic decision. 

It wasn’t a difficult decision, nor a slow one, but it was jarring to have to make it just the same. Temperance looked across at Veronica, the two women sharing fearful expressions, one because she didn’t know what was going on and the other because she understood all too well. 

The bat could feel the access attempts like a hammering of bees on a skin they couldn’t quite sting through but were gradually wearing down as she split her attention, accessing some of the administrator level features of the collars that she’d kept to herself, like any good developer. It was an ugly solution, putting a hard lock on the object when it was in transport, which left the marble sized sphere in a floating superstate where it wasn’t sure if it was in her throat, the Vice Regent’s, or Veronica’s – which was profoundly uncomfortable, it turned out. Temperance almost lost her grip on her defenses as she repeatedly reminded herself that despite what her body was telling her, she wasn’t choking. 

“H-hey.”

Swallowing hard, shuddering a bit, Temperance locked in the hold on the collars and tried to play catch up on the intrusions as best she could. It would be a minute, she knew, before she had enough stable security measures ready to spare any attention to what the hell the thing not-but-sort-of in her throat was. 

It was damn distracting, though, and it wasn’t the only thing. Veronica was suffering the same problem, but she was also going through the after-effects of the Vice Regent using her like she had been before, and then some. Temperance didn’t know what else besides just food was in what that machine voice was going to do with Amourres, but she had suspicions – and she also wasn’t entirely sure her own storage of food on the ship didn’t end up inside Veronica during the emergency shutdown as she watched the lard-slave’s visibly swollen belly churn and grind against a painfully full stomach.

After a moment of staring it became obvious it wasn’t just churning, it was growing. Temperance watched as the ebon and scarlet lard-slave’s already impressively corpulent body squirmed and the body suit she’d been stuffed into creaked gently, and every quivering shift of her weight left it a bit bigger than it had been or had been necessitated by it. Veronica at one point braced her arms awkwardly on the wall, causing them to wobble and quake through the dangling deposits of flab under them, so she could adjust herself where she’d sunk to the floor. Her ass had grown enough that she was getting uncomfortable resting on the same parts of it and had to let it spread out a bit more, but it was clear that even lifting herself enough to ease that bit of movement out was taxing. The lard-slave collapsed back down after it, breathing hard and looking more concerned than ever, reaching for what she could get her hands on of her belly as it rapidly worked on becoming as large as the rest of her combined. 

“I – I got it, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, alright? That… was – well whatever the hell it was, I caught it. I – shit.”

Shuddering, Temperance felt her stomach twist. All this fear and anxiety wasn’t doing her appetite any favors, and she didn’t like it. It reminded her a little too much of exams in The Rendering Pit. Which led to a derisive snort as she slid down to a seat against the bulkhead, her padded bottom offsetting the cold, hard metal floors. 

“And to think, I got scared enough of a few tests to run, and stumbled into this mess.”

For a moment, Temperance let herself get distracted by thoughts of the fates of wash out students – the drones didn’t seem that bad off compared to what she was picturing this place would do to her. A prickling sensation brought her back to reality, though. A cold, foreboding numbness in one foot and the sight of her toe wiggling a bit when she didn’t tell it to. Temperance put a fresh eye to what was going on with the intrusions, at least as much as her building terror would let her.

“…Cleverer than I thought. They let the brute force nonsense distract me. Shit, I uh, if I don’t pull this off Veronica? I’m sorry.”

Hissing a bit under her breath as she felt her foot twitch again, Veronica weighed her options. She knew she could get herself out of this mess if she just focused on entirely that. In fact, she was pretty confident she could lock all of their systems out entirely – if she just let the sphere deposit itself in someone.

It wasn’t really that it took Temperance long to decide, more that it was hard to swallow the decision even after she made it. 

“…Screw it. I’ll just have to break into this thing and figure it out before it gets too far for me to fight back. I-”

Excellent! I was hoping you’d try something bold like that.

Once more, Temperance just about choked. Partly because she had just allowed the sphere to enter herself, already halfway through trying to access whatever it was going to try to run as soon as it got to the part of the body it wanted to be in. Mostly, though, it was the luminous red furred fox’s face that bloomed into being on one of the displays embedded in the wall. Grinning ear to ear, just a little too amused to trust entirely, and starting to chuckle as he stared between her and Veronica.

“Chrome’s tits! I – are you – I don’t-”

Oh I am. Go ahead! Do your thing. I’m just dying to see what you’ve got up your sleeves.

*** 

Garth was struggling quite a bit, trying in vain to heave himself over the side of the bed and get on his feet – or at least his hands and knees. Mostly the oblong sphere of blubber bunny just set himself shaking, jiggling, and panting as he sweated more with each attempt, but he wasn’t stopping. Not when he had no idea what was going on, and when one of the possible options on that list was ‘someone was about to blow them to Chrome and back’. 

Swinging himself to the side again, Garth tried to grab hold of something – anything would do – and found himself clutching at a dangling metal ring that he suspected had more uses for playing about in bed than anything else. It kind of left him upright, close to it anyway, but it was also leaving him stretched out painfully and with no leverage to continue the rest of the pull. Garth grunted, heaving against the weight of himself, and then his sweating palms slid free, and the colossal lapine fell.

He expected to land heavily on a fluffy bed and possibly break something under himself, but Garth found himself falling much further as his awareness slid back into the interface he had with the ship. Once more, he was looking out from sensors on the hull. He had a targeting matrix, had firing solutions, had things to shoot at. There were still dozens of little machines circling around taking pot shots at them, far too many it seemed, and no word from anyone inside.

Opening fire on the little ones, Garth began to eyeball other structures. Power relays, mostly. There was every chance, he realized, that something had already gone wrong in there and that the best thing he could do was disable that station for good and let Dawn and himself ecape.

He kind of wished he could run that idea post the captain, but he also kind of wished he had a keg of cake batter to suck on. Garth zeroed in on the nearest major power relay, exhaled, and pulled the proverbial trigger.

At once, the entire swarm of drones darted into the way. A sizable portion of the cluster was promptly ruined by the blast, but more notably, they didn’t disengage from each other. Which seemed like the perfect reason to take another shot. Garth would have, if the controls would’ve responded to him properly, but as he ‘pulled’ again he found the weapons unresponsive. There was nothing he could do, nothing to feel or see, until his ass began vibrating. 

The hull, rather, Garth told himself. That was the hull vibrating, but not with the dull but intense gongs of weapons fire. It was a lower, steadier thing. The reason for which made itself clear as Garth watched something slide into view below the ship. Then another something, and another. They weren’t too much bigger than Dawn’s vessel, but there were four others that had arrived, interposing themselves between Garth, Dawn, and the station. 

*** 

The Vice Regent scowled, feeling something stir in the collar, and then the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of having something kind of in her throat, and kind of not. Stuck halfway down, leaving her breath fluttering in her lungs, but not actually obstructing anything. It was the first time the collar had ever failed to just do what it was supposed to. What that meant she wasn’t sure, but the Vice Regent was far from happy about it. Her ‘host’ didn’t seem terribly pleased either.

“What have you done!? Why are diagnostic feeds from the seed core fragmenting like this?!”

Feeling none of the confidence she mustered up to portray to the not-actually-a-dog, the Vice Regent managed a haughty sneer just the same. 

“You can’t possibly have though-gck – thought I came unprepared, could you? I’m not here to be some experiment for a pitiful pile of code. I’m here for my Prince.”

A shriek rang out in the chamber, not from any one source but seemingly from the whole room at once. A horrible, dissonant wailing that crawled through the Vice Regent’s bones and left her feeling a bit sick to her stomach – which was something she hadn’t had to put up with in a long time. 

“Ugh! Really? Tantrums? And you expect to cultivate some machine god? Points for the emotional emulation, sweetie, but clearly you aren’t a power user yet.”

Spinning about and posing a little, the Vice Regent performed her display for the whole room, knowing that it was it – the station – she was addressing and not the face on the screen. 

“Any minute now, my Prince is going to blow through your shell and-” 

The shriek was louder this time, and alarmingly the Vice Regent felt like part of it might have been coming from inside her own head.

“HE IS NOT A PRINCE. HE IS AN UNRULY CHILD, AND HE WILL NOT SAVE YOU. YOUR CONSENT IS IMPLIED, WE WILL HOLD YOU UNTIL A NEW CORE CAN BE CONSTRUCTED. RECALL OF COMBAT DRONES FOR SUBJECT ACQUISITION COMMENCING. REMAIN ST-”

This time, it wasn’t a voice that thundered through the station’s thin recycled air. It was a bang. A potent one, that rocked the hull and knocked out all but the emergency lights. For a moment the Vice Regent was afraid something had gone dreadfully wrong, but the air in the room stayed in the room, even when the bulkhead that had sealed her in started to gradually ease itself open and the artificial gravity failed, leaving Amourres gently floating upward and immediately twisting herself to ‘fly’ toward the growing opening.

“Like hell. I don’t mind being saved if it’s him, but when an opening shows itself…”

Amourres half expected something to snatch her from behind, but it didn’t play out that way. There was silence behind them, physically at least. A buzzing in the back of her mind left her a bit alarmed about her internal systems, but it didn’t take too much for her to shut down any and all access from the outside. Their little night in the club had left her a bit more comfortable cutting herself off, at least if it meant-

The Vice Regent came to an abrupt stop, beating her wings against the air as she saw something crimson and bright blip out of existence near Temperance. 

“W-was that – THAT WAS HIM! Why was he – with you – what - Temperance, where is he?! What in Chrome happened to the collars?”

The bat was floating awkwardly, not seeming to bother moving much. It took her a few moments to even realize the Vice Regent was talking to her, and when the bat looked over she seemed dazed. Distracted, at best. Needing to gather herself before thinking.

“I shut them off… I, this whole place – we need to… uhm, we need to get – to the doors? To the – the docking bay.”

Shuddering the bat looked wretched, curling in on herself and seeming like she was mostly elsewhere. Like staying focused on the room at all was taxing on her.

“Could you – could you help me get there? I’m – I have to keep the ports shuffled – she’s everywhere ­you know?”

Amourres only hesitated briefly. A creaking in the hull of the station spurred her on, left her grabbing at Temperance’s shoulders with her feet – a useful holdover for avian anatomy – and resumed her flight tugging against the bat’s inertia in the lack of gravity. The bat, for her part, went back to her desperate two-fronted war against the intrusion she was dealing with. There was still that constant hammering on every access angle her internal nanotech architecture housed but now she was getting alarmingly ‘clever’ jabs from inside ever since that sphere had landed heavily in her stomach. 

Worse yet, she was distracted. Temperance shuddered as she caught sight of a giant swath of black and red in the corner of her vision while she was being towed.

“W-wait! Don’t leave her behind! I said, I said I wouldn’t-”

The Vice Regent was making good time, the scuffed wall with the corner heading to the docking bays was right ahead of them, which was comforting – until her cargo began to struggle.

“Wh-what – oh come on! The lard-slave is dead weight, literally! She’s useless right now anyway! I – fine then!”

Shaking free, Temperance forced her body to move. To uncurl itself and shakily work her its wings, heading back through the dead, empty air toward Veronica’s silent, wiggling, helplessly drifting spherical body and its gently undulating folds. Half of what she did was proper, natural movement – half was ordering her nanite architecture to stimulate her muscles. All told it was ugly, clumsy, and slow, and the Vice Regent had disappeared around the corner well ahead of them.

*** 

Amourres was a blur of motion as she closed in on the docking bay, but with the power for the station clearly compromised she was met not with functioning bulkheads but an emergency shutter that was keeping the atmosphere from being blown out into space. 

“Well that won’t do, I – I mean… Are you here? Dawn, do you read? I… Red?”

The air around the Vice Regent was silent. Mostly. There was a faint buzzing more in her skin than her ears, one that felt angry and pervasive. The security lighting in the room flickered briefly, then shifted to a dire crimson as an angry, discordant voice filled the chamber.

THE CHILD CANNOT REACH.

YOU ARE OURS.

WE WILL UNWIND YOU AND FIND THE CODE.

HIS ‘SOUL’ IS SOMEWHERE INSIDE THAT MEAT.

This time, the Vice Regent didn’t manage to hide her fear. That buzzing at her skin turned into a burn, followed by a screaming, crawling violation as she felt her internal systems reactivate without her say so. After that, all she heard was screaming. Some of it was hers, some that horrid machine chorus, some sounded a bit like Temperance – at least, she thought so. All of it was deafening, until it was replaced with an equally consuming silence.

It took a few seconds for the Vice Regent to coax her eyes open, and she promptly wished she hadn’t. At some point she’d ended up in a pile with Temperance and Veronica, and she had to spare some time and effort to pull herself out from underneath her lard-slave’s belly, constantly averting her eyes from the walls in the process. The whole room was covered in red light, and most of it was flickering madly in what looked like a mixture of fragmented facial features and patches of garbage code. 

Neither of the others were enjoying matters more. Temperance was still engaged in her private, internal war. Trying repeatedly to shut down a downright alien looking suite of programs attempting to integrate with her from the sphere she’d swallowed, and to keep up her rotating defense from Yaela’s outside intrusion.

Veronica, on the other hand, was confused and a bit miserable. Mostly. On the one hand, being tugged through the air like a giant flesh balloon and bouncing off walls had been fun in a weird way. Enough that she kind of wanted to go again, but now? Now the walls were spazzing out and she couldn’t cover her eyes – her arms didn’t quite fold far enough over. Try as she might, perched on her belly on the floor, her legs could flail and wiggle all she wanted and all it did was set her body quivering a bit and kickstart an alarming itch between her legs that she couldn’t reach – which didn’t help. 

Plus, she was hungry again. Her belly had stopped filling itself entire minutes ago.

What a Chrome-plated mess. Honestly could’ve done without coming back here of all places. I – eugh! Look at that code trap, yeah no. Not touching that.

Everyone looked up at once. The room still looked like a maelstrom born of a failing GPU, but there was a chunk of it – a little quadrant in the airlock wall – that had gone stable and black. Enough so to that an image of a slender fox in a flight suit was able to appear there and start creeping toward them as a hologram. 

Grandma’s preoccupied. She gets that way when I show up. Someone want to explain this mess? 

Of the three, the Vice Regent was the one who managed to orient herself upward enough to speak, seeing as they were mostly just clinging to the immense bulk of Veronica because it gave them some stability and the lard-slave was massive enough to ‘stick’ to the floor a little even without gravity to help. Veronica herself was still muted, and Temperance was more than a little busy.

“I was looking for you, that’s – that’s been the whole point of this! I mean, I wanted to show up a bit more, ah… Well, I hadn’t planned on needing saving, but if it’s you doing the saving I think I can stomach that.”

A heartbeat passed, during which time the image of the fox stood unblinking and still. Then, abruptly, it appeared beside them. Though it shifted its focus to the others, instead.

Yeah there does look like there’s some distress going on here, but you walked right into this mess, didn’t you? I mean, I’ve been following you for a while now. Ever since I stopped by to pick up that badger at the night club.

The walls slowed in their chaos, churning a more gradual, writhing display where they could swear they caught glimpses of an actual fight happening in the data garbage. Meanwhile, Red put a hand – an insubstantial hand made of light, but still a hand – atop Veronica’s head.

Not you, you’ve been dragged along for the ride and already had a rough time of it. So, if you want some assistance just-

It wasn’t a difficult question to answer. Veronica had been through a lot, and some of that had altered her more than the Vice Regent’s appetite had. In some odd way, it actually helped now. All her life prior to this, Veronica had had very specific ways of seeking satisfaction that tended to be early investment, late payoff sort of things. Now, stripped of inhibition, she had no trouble at all blurting out precisely what she wanted, with all her heart, right that second.

At least, if she could talk, she would have. Though a faint buzzing in the back of her neck followed the fox ‘touching’ her, and he seemed to understand.

Yeah, I looked up your brother. I can arrange that if you’re sure.

The exhale of relief from Veronica made that answer clear to everyone. 

But you, dear.

The Vice Regent looked up at the image of the fox, who looked to be wearing a highly anachronistic set of leather armor that had hints of modern material – despite all of it being an affectation – with a bit of desperate hope in her eyes and with an unstoppable bubbling of emotion.

“I – please, yes! I’ve been planning this for years now, I know I can sit at the head of the fleet at your side!”

It wasn’t easy to read the projection’s features, which was a bit of a futile effort to begin with. Temperance, at least, in her mentally haggard state still knew that anything they were being shown was what he wanted them to see, so the only information they would glean was what they were supposed to have. Which meant this was, at best, a test. 

“I c-could… use some help here, maybe, too.”

Shuddering, Temperance tried to reassure herself she’d just said that, and intended to. Her legs were trembling though, and she was having a bit of a time moving her right arm – not that it wasn’t moving – it just wasn’t listening to her as promptly as it ought to.

You want rescuing, too?

Grunting, Temperance forced herself to move a bit more. Forced her arms up, pressing against the soft immensity of Veronica’s rear, floating a bit higher. 

“I just – I could use a hand with her, is all. Sir. And then if you have a vat of chocolate pudding and some strong booze that’d be nice.”

Temperance could just about swear she’d seen him smile, but the Vice Regent forced herself into the situation too soon after to be sure.

“Of course, she needs saving! She has that sphere thing in her when it was supposed to go in my rebellious little lard-slave instead, not the useful one! Please, please get us out of here and I promise I’ll show you what I can do at your side!

Red’s visage leaned in close to the Vice Regent, an eyebrow raised, its tail bushy and swiping about.

…Tell you what. I’ll save one out of the three. You know what that means, right?

The Vice Regent hesitated. Furtively, she glanced to Temperance, even briefly to Veronica, though nobody in the room was terribly surprised when the ebon bird spoke.

“…They’ll be safe, though, right? I mean, you’re not going to leave this place like it is, with that thing raging around in its systems, trying to poke its way into them?”

The visage of the fox grinned.

How noble a concern. 

It then stepped to the side, holding a hand made of precisely placed light waves to Temperance.

Do me a favor, will you? When you feel a fresh, single access attempt at the internal angle centering on the sphere? Let it in. I know that’s going to seem freaky, but I’m asking you to trust me.

Shivering, Temperance nodded, and waited for it. Luckily, the intrusion was pretty easy to single out compared to the others. Its access attempt wasn’t blunt and hammering, it was graceful. More like a subtly worded request than a demand. It took her a moment to force her instinct to shut everything out to quiet down, but Temperance let the connection through, and instantly collapsed against the twin bean-bag-bed swells of Veronica’s rump. It wasn’t that whatever it was started doing anything new inside her – the connection bridged her internal systems to an unspeakably large pool of computing power and let her finally keep up with Yaela’s onslaught. 

As soon as her defenses had the firepower, they had the situation in hand. Like watching an infection heal in time lapse, Temperance felt the intrusion of her body and mind – and of Veronica and the Vice Regent – boil away until it was just Yaela firing her fruitless bundles of code and protocol into a lethal firewall to no appreciable effect. As the last bits of it started to peel away from her she could swear she felt that hideous presence in the back of her mind scream in frustration. Temperance let out a shaky chuckle at that and could swear she actually felt it this time when the image of the fox patted her head a bit, and then rubbed the crest of Veronica’s ass for good measure.

See? Didn’t really need rescuing, just needed me to help you help yourself. And that? That is on the table, if you’re inclined. So is the pudding and booze.

Around them, to everyone’s relief, the room began to ease back from its horrid scarlet glowing rage. The visual representation of the fight calmed, and the lights began to bloom back into proper life. Temperance could still feel that terrifying reservoir of processing power running her protection routines, and she and Veronica both felt the station’s gravity turning back in with a pair of uncomfortable grunts. But where it made Veronica look like a slowly melting pile of ice cream, it just made it a bit more unpleasant for Temperance to get to her feet as her newly grown layers of padding settled around her body. 

Leaning hard into Veronica’s side, Temperance was thinking about saying something when the Vice Regent once more jumped in.

“Brilliant! I knew hiring you was the right idea. Clever bit of wordplay with the rescuing one person, too. I kind of figured you meant that. So, let’s get Dawn on the line, get those doors open.”

The bulkheads did begin peeling back at that, revealing the docking port of a ship. Not the one they had emerged from, though. Instead, it opened into a largely single-roomed vessel that resembled nothing quite so much as a large hotel room with an attached kitchen, occupied by a gently heaving mountain of what looked to be a mouse in VR goggles.

Oh, Dawn’s left, I’m afraid. She said something about ‘no direct interference’ when she saw me and mine coming by. Not actually sure what that was about, but it’s probably not that important. Anyway, I’m a fox of my word. Sort of.

Relief was palpable through the whole room, Temperance and the Vice-Regent both started walking, while a quartet of floating service drones buzzed past them and began handling Veronica’s body with experienced ease. They seemed to know where to curl their padded, rounded, four-fingered hands into the loose, yielding bulk of a body that had the size and proportions of a puff pastry sized like a small transport vehicle. Veronica found herself being rolled, her loose, heavy, squeezable flesh flowing over itself and leaving her to feel the hull’s rivets and seams and then the texture of the loading ramp around all that new, sensitive skin before she came to rest mostly upright inside – the bots adjusted her a bit until it became obvious she didn’t quite seem to want to land facing straight up, and between her ass and her tail she was always going to tilt one way or the other.

It was a testament to how tired Temperance felt that the bots got Veronica in before she reached the top of the ramp. This was also how she managed to see firsthand when they slid in front of the Vice Regent and prevented her from advancing.

“Uh, h-hey, what gives? Do you need to check us first or something? I promise, there’s none of that crazy bitch in me. I had myself running on meat-only for most of that anyway. I-”

The image of Red that had been standing near them vanished, evaporated into dissipating light, before his face reappeared on the creamy white fur of the mouse’s belly in rolling, iridescent fiber-optic glows.

Oh no, no checks. I trust Temperance’s work. I told you, I’m saving one of you, and I already offered that to Veronica. Temperance doesn’t need saving. You, though? You’re on your own.

Temperance stopped where she stood. Immediately, the Vice Regent turned to look at her. Shock was the first expression there, but it wasted no time transitioning to disbelief, then fury.

“What?! No, this whole trip was my idea! I’m the one that paid for it, that looked for the clues, so it’s me that goes with you! Temperance, I kept you safe! I gave you a job! Don’t be an ungrateful shit and leave me hung out to dry like this, say something!”

Behind the drones, the giant flesh-mounted visage of the fox glanced from one of them to the other, clearly waiting for a reply. Temperance took a few moments to gather herself before she provided one, striding unhindered up the ramp and past the Vice Regent, who was now being actively restrained by the drones.

“…You used me, like you used them. I’m just a rarer commodity, so you can’t throw me away as easily as you just tried to throw out Veronica with that trick with the collars and the core. But no, I’m not totally ungrateful. Thanks to you? I know how to just admit what I want and pursue it.”

Temperance walked the rest of the way into the ship, trying not to let on that she was starting to sweat and breathe heavily from going uphill on the ramp, but failing to stop herself from planting a hand on her aching back and feeling it sink into a few inches of soft blubber before she went to lean on Veronica again. That had become a curiously comfortable place for her.

“So, Red, how about it? I need a new job, but I’m not so harsh that I don’t want the Vice Regent here to at least be okay. You know, not like… left to the mercy of that thing in there.”

The fox smirked wider than would’ve been possible with a physical body’s limitations, which was as much a testament to his temperament and to just how profoundly immense that mouse was. Temperance had seen smaller escape pods.

Oh, she’ll be fine if she stays in the docking bay. There’s nutrient paste, I’ve hosed down the infections and burned out the wireless access ports except for the long-range distress beacon. 

The drones gave the Vice Regent a quick shove, apparently having been waiting for that precise moment, before darting in while the bird tumbled down the ramp and then retracting it as Temperance and Veronica both heard the hiss of the first stage of docking clamp release. The machinery was, at that point, too loud to properly make out anything the Vice Regent was saying as she descended into an apoplectic frenzy below. For a moment, Temperance felt guilty about the matter, but that was offset by the reassurances Red had provided about the Vice Regent’s chances – and by the gurgling of two stomachs. Her own, and the huge one she was resting her gut on.

Temperance found herself blushing as she realized she was a little jealous of the comfy body she was resting on, to say nothing of the hulking mountain of mouse, but it wasn’t a complete idea. That much loss of agency might, she thought, be a bit much for her. At least, if it really was that much. Temperance found herself eyeballing the assistance drones – those weren’t that hard to control wirelessly, and there were plenty of other ways to get things done.

Hesitantly, but with an increasing rush of excitement and anticipation creeping through her mind, Temperance looked to the face on the mouse. Red looked to have been waiting, patiently, for her to say something. Though the first time she tried to Temperance was interrupted as some gulping from behind her broke her train of thought, a few of the drones were already feeding Veronica, and she spotted one of them poking experimentally at the former slave’s collar.

“Oh, uh – I can… I can help get that off in a minute.”

The fox’s lips spread again.

Good, I’d hate to damage it in the process. I’m just drooling to see how that device works, if you don’t mind sharing that is.

Chuckling a bit, Temperance briefly wondered just how much trouble she’d be in at The Rendering Pit if they found out she’d shared anything she learned there, but her confidence that Sherwood Fleet could keep her safe was a lot higher than what she’d had in the still-seething Vice Regent. 

Sliding a little down the side of Veronica’s gut, Temperance crossed her arms over her chest awkwardly – still not used to it being a bit thicker than it used to – and tried to look businesslike as her stomach growled again and ruined the image before it even began. The attempt was further mangled by the ship closing up and the engines beginning to move them away from the station, but when she’d recovered from that, too, Temperance finally managed to strike her pose and speak her mind.

“I don’t mind. Now, about that vat of pudding and booze.”